Of all the 1980s synth pop bands who have taken it upon themselves to reform in recent years, OMD's legacy is perhaps the most curious. They were signed to Factory records, had their sleeves designed by Peter Saville, wrote songs dedicated to ultra-hip Krautrockers Neu and released one of the era's great weird electronic albums in 1982's Dazzleships. All the constituent elements of a cool name to drop, and yet, a distinct hint of naffness attends their memory.

That it does so is largely down to frontman Andy McCluskey, tales of whose profound uncoolness are legion. At their first London gig, with Joy Division, he took the stage in a crocheted waistcoat and flares. Furthermore, he minted an on-stage dancing style for which the phrase, "Look, he's enjoying himself and that's the main thing," was invented: the kind of dancing that caused one drunken audience member at a Manchester festival to express his disapproval by climbing on stage and attacking him with a beer tray.

Decades later, you can still see the drunken bloke's point. McCluskey's dancing remains less OMD than OMG: he flails guilelessly around the stage like the last uncle standing on the wedding disco dancefloor. But time has been kinder to their oeuvre, which, for a few years at least, did a valiant job of surrounding a pure pop core with some appealingly weird ideas. OMD had more hits than you can remember, testament to their way with an insinuating melody and to an odder era of pop when you could follow up a perky single about Joan of Arc with a gloomy dirge about Joan of Arc and make the top 10 with both of them.

Tonight, played at unexpectedly ear-splitting volume – as if OMD still feel they have something to prove to the kind of rock fan who spent the early 80s dismissing electronic pop as poncy hairdressers playing synthesisers – they sound great: Messages is darkly melancholic, Souvenir beautifully opaque.

More surprisingly, the audience react the same way to tracks from OMD's comeback album History of Modern, which tells you something about its forensic re-creation of OMD's early 80s sound, weirdness and pop smarts fully intact. Indeed, at one point, an audience member feels impelled to throw her bra at McCluskey's soberly besuited foil, Paul Humphreys. "Thank you," he says, visibly surprised at the ardour with which the band are being received, "for that, um, rather large present."